A radical approach to job creation and education

Dr.S.Sundararajan, Professor, SIMS

India is a young country; nearly 65% of its population is younger than 35. It has an opportunity to drive economic growth on the back of its rising working-age population (those aged 15-64). This population has boasted a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2% since 2000, a situation often referred to as Indias demographic dividend. The nation is expected to add almost 10-12 million people to its workforce every year over the next two decades, with the working-age population crossing the 1billion mark by 2030.
However, India risks squandering this demographic opportunity if it cannot create quality employment opportunities at scale and train its growing workforce to excel in those jobs. With greater access to information and growing aspirations among the nations youth, the quality of employment that India provides will prove as crucial as the quantity. It is important to realise this as it is not just an issue for the nations confronting the demographic dividend or crisis, it is also a major risk for all G20 countries as they face the potential for significant migration, political instability and declining global growth if the challenges and opportunities are not addressed effectively in places. This will put significant pressure on the education systems in those places.
For India, it means having to add 6 million primary students, 76 million secondary students and 21 million university students to the current numbers. To achieve this through the building of traditional schools and universities would require the construction of 500,000 new institutions, requiring orders of magnitude more budget than India has in its entirety on an annual basis.
Leveraging demographic advantage will need active participation by academicians. Techno-Political-Governance model needs to be successfully evolved to execute Inclusive-Urbanization model for 100 top cities which will collectively contribute 70% of GDP to national economy by 2030. This will demonstrate the most appropriate turn-around strategy for rest of the country to adopt rapid growth and development to support and complement high performance urban network.
Academicians and Institutes need a radical approach to job creation and education.